I do not work for Microsoft. I just use their products a lot, not always by choice.
I have found Windows Live Photo Gallery to be a good product from Microsoft.
Things I like:
-
- Organize photos and videos in folders on your computer, not in some proprietary file system or database that I cannot access any other ways.
- Publish photos and videos online to Live or other sites by using free plug-ins.
- Email or order prints. I could not tell you the last time I ordered prints. That is why I have them on the computer.
- People tagging – add a name to a face then Windows Live Photo Gallery will find all the photos with that person’s face.
- Photo Editing – Some basic tools like, adjust exposure, color, detail by hand or auto adjust.
- Panoramas – Windows Live Photo Gallery can stitch several photos together to make one large photo.
- Date taken – It will also show all the photos and videos that were taken at a certain time. From year to month to day.
- Import Photo and Video – Photos can be imported from a camera or a scanner. Videos cannot be scanned in. I would like to see someone try it though.
- Blog – One cool feature is that if you see a photo in your gallery,
Now with all that good stuff said, here are some nice items. Some photo organizers like to scan the entire computer. Windows Live Photo Gallery does not do that. This is great because who wants all the pictures that some application might have, like an arrow button. What it does do is, read all the photos and videos from “My Pictures”, “My Videos”, “Shared Pictures” and “Shared Videos”. You can store your photos in other directories or even on other machines as long as you can see those folders in Windows Explorer. All you have to do is, go to “file” – “Include a folder in the gallery…”. A dialog window will popup and ask which folder is to be included in the gallery. It does not care where as long as the computer can get to the folder.
Microsoft is starting to do some things I like. I hope they keep it up, or in the case of MSN, just make it able to compete.
l8r
